WHY ARE THE BEACHES NOT TURNING UP IN VENUES OF CONCERN NOTIFICATIONS ANY MORE?
Top NSW Health official Dr Jeremy McAnulty has today confirmed in a press conference that many venues of concern – particularly those in lower priority areas such as metropolitan Sydney which includes the Northern Beaches – are no longer being listed on the NSW Health website.
He explained that this is to avoid higher risk exposure events becoming lost in the detail as countless venues are added each day. Areas where transmission is showing to be lower risk, such as shopping centres, are not being listed on the NSW Health website since the last couple of days, he explained.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As such, we request that anyone who is notified by NSW directly that a covid positive case has visited a public venue on the Northern Beaches please contact us so that we can continue to provide this service. Locals then prioritise NSW Health information in the first instance and check for lower risk events with us.
We require screen shots of notifications, or similar evidence of date and time, and it must be in the public interest to report. It is not to alarm residents, it is to ensure our community remains fully informed, if it wishes to be, of potential risks and gets tested as soon as possible to avoid all possible risks of accidental spread. You can contact us privately via social networks or email the editor at editor@manlyobserver.com.au
You can view the full transcript of that exchange below:
REPORTER: We’re seeing very few close contact and casual contact locations in western and south-western Sydney despite the explosion of cases. Is there a different approach New South Wales Health is pursuing?
DR McANULTY: Yeah, there is…We know there are quite low-risk settings that we just don’t see very much transmission at all in, and that’s such as supermarkets, shopping centres and so on. So we’re now deliberately prioritising in the metropolitan area venues or places where people have been in households, in other households, not their own, in workplaces, and high-risk settings such as hospitals, abled care facility, educational settings, including childcare settings.
REPORTER: Is that because of what’s involved if you have to go to those locations? That you’re better off targeting resources? Because case numbers are stretching them too far. That’s the reality.
DR McANULTY: What we’ve learned is where the infection is most likely to spread. That’s why we’re focusing on those areas and we’ve learned that people get lost in the detail when we put up venues that we don’t think are risk places on the website or in the media. So we’re really trying to focus the public’s attention on those where we believe there’s a true risk.
Let’s be clear. New South Wales Health has stopped putting sites on the list of potential exposure sites, you’ve stopped putting locations that have been visited by cases because there are too many locations. When did that first happen?
REPORTER: Let’s be clear. New South Wales Health has stopped putting sites on the list of potential exposure sites, you’ve stopped putting locations that have been visited by cases because there are too many locations. When did that first happen?
DR McANULTY: We continue to, in places outside metropolitan Sydney or areas where we haven’t seen large numbers of cases, such as regional Sydney, regional parts of the state, Newcastle, Central Coast, Wollongong. We continue to put even the tiniest risk venues on the website. In those areas in the metropolitan area where we know that there are many, many places that cases have gone but little risk, we’re deliberately focusing on places I’ve mentioned.
REPORTER: When did that happen? When did that happen? When did that happen?
DR McANULTY: That’s begun in the last few days.
REPORTER:We’re hearing that some of those regional businesses aren’t finding out they’re an exposure site until they’re listed on Facebook. Are you still aiming to call or text them to tell them to close?
DR McANULTY: Certainly in regional areas, we’re continuing to take a approach in terms of identifying and work being the local venues.
To view our rolling thread of local updates and venues of concern go here.
